The Paul Debate: Critical Questions for Understanding the Apostle, by N. T. Wright (Baylor University Press, 2015), 110 pages.
N. T. Wright is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St. Andrews University and was formerly the bishop of Durham. He has written several books on Paul, including What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity?, Paul: In Fresh Perspective, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, Paul and His Recent Interpreters, and Pauline Perspectives: Essays on Paul, 1978–-2013 among many other books and essays.
This small book is a response to the flood of reviews that were published on Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God, a 1,700 page comprehensive exposition of Paul’s history, background, and theology.
He takes up five issues that were recurring themes in reviews:
- Was Paul a Jewish or Hellenistic thinker?
- How did Paul come to see Jesus as God?
- Covenantal storyline or apocalyptic inbreaking?
- What is justification to the people of God?
- What was Paul’s conception of mission?
To provide the answers as succinctly as possible:
- Paul was fundamentally Jewish, the theological contours of which were monotheism, election, and eschatology. Paul was transformed by becoming part of the new creation and having the mind of the Messiah. Yet he was still the apostle to the Gentiles in a Hellenistic milieu, which must be reckoned with.
- Wright summarizes various views of how Jesus became God, with his solution being that Jesus is the embodiment of Yahweh, who promised he would come personally to rescue Israel from exile.
- Paul certainly has apocalyptic strands of thought, but we still don’t have a solidified definition of apocalyptic, and Paul’s thought stems from the OT storyline which is laid out by covenants. The discontinuity from the OT in apocalyptic-Pauline thought is unhelpful.
- Justification is a sub-category of being “in the Messiah.” Those who are in him are declared forensically to be “in the right” and “within the covenant.”
- Paul sought to bring the new creation into the old by his establishment of new-creational churches throughout the ancient world.
Evaluation
This book should be required reading for those who have read PFG and its reviews. The dialogue between scholars is beneficial and allows one to sharpen views on these current issues. It is good to see Wright continuing to refine his understanding of justification, and his attempt to place justification within the “metanarrative” of the OT. I wonder, though, if justification is a sub-set of being “in the Messiah,” how he would define justification in the OT–how was one “in the right” or “within the covenant” in the OT, and is that justification in the same way it was for Paul?
His analysis of apocalyptic interpretations of Paul is perhaps the most helpful part of this book. He weaves through several passages in which Paul uses apocalyptic language, but he also contrasts Paul’s writings as a whole with other apocalyptic writings. There are stark differences. Moreover, I would see Paul’s hidden/revealed (apocalyptic) language more in terms of the “mystery” that was revealed by God, which was partially revealed in the OT but mostly concealed. Such a scheme is much different than apocalyptic interpretations of Paul, such as D. Cambell’s.
In sum, this is a stimulating little book at only 110 pages. Buy it and read it in one sitting; you will be enriched.
Preview or buy The Paul Debate here.
